As it stands, I often get to do both at once, as I did this time. Of course, Stephen and I were so lost in conversation that I didn’t even think to have the waitress snap a shot of us enjoying our time there, so all I can offer is their sign outside.

The Falling Rock Tap House has a motto: No Crap On Tap. And boy, do they ever live up to that motto. They have ~70 taps, and about ~70 bottled beers, and you won’t find Bud, Miller, or Coors on draft*.

That said, extensive draft lists aren’t uncommon these days. What’s particularly impressive about the Falling Rock is that they really go to lengths to have a very well-curated, interesting beer list. About half of their offerings are local CO beers, with the rest being the best-of-the-best of what they can get their hands on nationwide. Yes, you will frequently find Russian River, Dogfish Head, Jolly Pumpkin, The Bruery, Lost Abbey, etc. And it doesn’t stop at the US border, with some good Belgian offerings.

In addition, while (like any bar) they have a great collection of IPAs, they are not by any stretch of the imagination limited to IPA. They carry great examples of a wide range of beer styles. They have some amazing offerings during the Great American Beer Festival (and usually have a “Beer MC” to announce what’s being tapped because they move through beer so quickly during GABF). They have a number of yearly events, with their “Dain Bramage” strong ale & barleywine festival occurring during the cold** Denver winter.

Finally, as it pertains to beer, they have one thing that many decent beer bars don’t have–servers who REALLY know beer. These aren’t waiters and waitresses that only know whether beer is dark or light. They can give well-informed descriptions and comparisons of beer. So if you’re new in town trying to figure out what obscure local Colorado beer to order, you’re in luck.

In short, these guys know their beer.

Outside of beer, they of course also offer food. I’ll be up front. The food is greasy bar food. That said, the food is extremely well-executed greasy bar food. I really like their deep-fried mushroom appetizer. It’s large button mushrooms, breaded in a mildly-spicy mix, deep-fried and served with dipping sauce. Simple? Yes. Tasty as hell? Absolutely. They make good burgers, sandwiches, wings, fries, etc.

I generally consider myself to be a “foodie”. However, that doesn’t mean food has to be fancy. It just has to be good. And Falling Rock food is good.

Last, but not least, is that Falling Rock is an excellent value. All the food is reasonably-priced, and beers are well-priced for the quality and rarity of the individual brews. Stephen and I had 5 pints between us, the fried mushroom appetizer, and each had a sandwich (a burger for him, pastrami sandwich for me). The total bill came out to ~$58. That’s very reasonable.

If you’re ever out in Denver, I highly recommend visiting the Falling Rock. And having someone like Stephen to share your meal with is even better.

A Stone IPA? Brad’s going to follow up brewpubs in Shanghai, coffee milk stout, Gose, and beer from the oldest brewery in the world with an IPA from Stone? Hardly seems special, you wonder…

No, I wouldn’t review just any San Diego IPA. There is something special about this IPA from Stone. What makes it special? What it lacks.

Stone Delicious IPA is a gluten-reduced beer. In recent years, brewers have learned that a specific clarifying agent happens to break down gluten, to the point where any typical gluten test will show a negative result. This allows them to brew a beer using gluten-containing grains and most gluten-sensitive people can drink it with no ill effects. The way the additive works coupled with the natural lawyer-aversion of most American companies means that they won’t market this beer as “gluten-free”, but it’s about as close as you’ll get. How close? Well, they lab-test every single batch and you can check the lab results here.

In the old days (i.e. more than ~3 years ago), gluten-free beers were terrible. They brewed them with alternate grains like sorghum or rice syrup, they didn’t really taste like beer, and generally they failed in the market. Brewers today, such as Widmer’s Omission brand, are hoping to change that.
So why do I care? A few reasons.

First, I’m somewhat sensitive to the needs of the gluten-sensitive. My son is on a gluten-free diet, and while I’m not exactly going to be giving a 5-year-old any Delicious IPA, it does make me curious. In addition, I have a coworker who several years ago started getting pretty heavily into beer and homebrewing. At roughly the same time, he started having some significant health problems, and discovered that he was gluten-intolerant. He put the brewing equipment in storage, and stopped drinking beer. I haz a sad.

Second, I’m frankly curious myself. I hadn’t tried the Omission beers, but when I heard that Stone was doing a gluten-reduced IPA, I figured I should try it and review it. I drink a lot of Stone beer. I drink a lot of IPA. I know what Stone-produced IPA typically tastes like. I figured that if anyone was going to be able to determine if the gluten-reduction process made a meaningful difference to the taste or character of the beer, I could do so.

So here we go. What’s the verdict?

Stats: 7.7% ABV, 80 IBU. Color not listed.

Aroma: A lot of citrus hops. Not so much orange as maybe grapefruit. You know, that sort of subtler smell that gives rise to the idea that the fruit you’re about to eat is REALLY bitter? Yeah, that’s what I’m getting here.

Appearance: Pale, slightly hazy. Generally not uncommon for very hoppy ales. Nice white head, dissipates fairly quickly. Even with the nucleation sites etched into the bottom of the Sierra Nevada glass here, the head doesn’t self-sustain as much as I’d expect. Perhaps this is due to the broken-down gluten?

Flavor: Nice solid hop flavor, and this is definitely fitting the mold of a very crisp, dry West Coast IPA. Bitterness takes a place right on the front of the stage, with malt waiting in the wings. If I had to critique this beer, I’d say that it should have a little bit more malt and body to be able to stand up to the bitterness level they’re going for here. It just seems to be missing something in the malt character. Reminder — I love massively bitter, hoppy IPAs. But there has to be enough malt to form a backbone in these beers, and this one is missing it.

Mouthfeel: Light body, and while I am criticizing the malt, I wouldn’t call this thin or watery. It’s not like the many session IPAs that are lacking in that department. I’d like a little more body, but if they’d added malt flavor and kept the body where it is, I wouldn’t have a problem. That said, there are no flaws either, such as astringency.

Overall Impression: The beer is well-brewed. I expect nothing less from Stone. There are no detectable flaws. But I don’t love it. There are better IPAs out there, including Stone’s normal IPA.

I say there are better IPAs out there. But are there better gluten-reduced IPAs? If I had a gluten intolerance that kept me from drinking the others, I would be VERY happy with this beer.

More importantly, I can say that this beer, for my stylistic critiques, tastes like Stone beer. If you gave this to me and didn’t tell me it was gluten-reduced, I wouldn’t be able to tell. This isn’t some sorghum-based monstrosity. This isn’t some “almost-beer”. This is beer. For people who can’t consume with gluten, to drink a beer like this isn’t missing out on a thing.

I’m not going for cutting-edge, today. That said, even though this is a beer that is about as traditional as they come–as is the brewery that created it–it’s a beer that I’ll bet most drinkers have overlooked on the shelf. Many liquor stores don’t even put this beer in the craft section; they relegate it to the “imports.”

I’m speaking, of course, of Weihenstephaner, the oldest brewery in the world.
I had the good fortune to visit the brewery in Freising when overseas on business in Oct 2013**. While my schedule was compact and I could only visit for a very late dinner and beers, and couldn’t take a tour, it was very nice. Should you find yourself in Munich, Freising is very near the Munich airport and it’s easy to get to the brewery from the hotels. Making it to Weihenstephaner is a necessary pilgrimage for the devoted beer fan, and I highly recommend it if you can make it happen.
The beer of the day is the Weihenstephaner Vitus, which they describe as a weizenbock. Based on the style guidelines* and my review below, it’s a little bit questionable whether the beer fits the style. But I’m not going to hold a brewery which predates the Magna Carta to a set of style guidelines that are at most a few decades old.

I had this beer at the brewery, and enjoyed it. Yet like any normal beer fan, I came back to the US and went right back to IPAs. I haven’t bought this beer since, until I saw it and picked it up on a whim. And wow, I’m glad I did!

Stats: 7.7% ABV, 17 IBU. Color not listed.

Aroma: Bready, with a yeasty aroma and a hint of clove, and maybe a very slight banana. For the ABV, you don’t pick up any whiff of the alcohol content of the beer. Very nice.

Appearance: Pours hazy and light in color. Definitely more of a strong hefeweizen in appearance than a bock due to the light color. White head with good retention.

Flavor: Here I get more of the banana than I pick up in the nose, and less of the clove. It’s a silky-smooth soft beer. Again, tastes more like a strong hefeweizen than a weizenbock, but I’m not complaining. It’s delicious. There’s something about beers from this region (I think partly the very soft water) that really makes them different than almost any other hefeweizen I’ve ever had.

Mouthfeel: I’ll have to use the same descriptor a second time. This is a silky-smooth beer. It’s medium-bodied, and there’s enough carbonation in there that you can feel the bubbles dancing on your taste buds. And yet again, there’s no hint of the strength.

Overall Impression: It’s a beautiful beer. Every element just comes together perfectly. There’s not a thing missing from this beer, nor anything unnecessary. You don’t survive as a brewery for nearly a millennium without knowing what you’re doing. Of course, 974 years is plenty of time to perfect a recipe! In a world where we as craft beer drinkers are always looking for the new, a beer like this reminds us that there really wasn’t anything wrong with the old.

All in all, overlooking Weihenstephaner when you go to the beer store is a mistake. Yes, I’m a beer geek. Yes, I like seeking out the sexy new releases and actively look for the breweries who are doing something new and different. I’m certainly not going to stop doing that. But every once in a while, going back to the traditional is worth it.

One note that I will make here, before I leave you. Beer is a perishable item. Beer shipped from Germany is no exception. This advice is true of any store, but particularly true of imports. Choose a beer store with high stock turnover. Hefeweizen (like IPA) is best drank young. If you buy a bottle that’s been sitting on the shelf for 4 months, chances are it won’t live up to the review I just wrote!» Read more

So, unfortunately I’ve lapsed a few weeks on the beer reviews. Travel, the holidays, and whatnot… I’ve been drinking good beer, but haven’t had the time to review good beer.

For this week, I’ve decided to trend back over to the “interesting” side of the aisle, with a Gose. Gose is a very obscure beer style, relatively unheard of 4 years ago and now only known to some of the most dedicated beer geeks. I first encountered a Gose at the 2011 Southern California Homebrew Festival, on “pro brewer” night when The Bruery was pouring their Salt of the Earth. My first reaction once I tasted it? “I need to brew this.”
Gose is named after the river Gose, which flows near Goslar, Germany, where the style was invented and first popularized. The style possibly dates back 1000 years, becoming popularized in “nearby” Leipzig, which became known as the home of Gose. It’s not brewed within the Reinheitsgebot due to the addition of coriander, it is a tart wheat ale, with notes of salt (originally supposed to be due to the salty water near the mines of Goslar) and coriander. A possible way to think of the beer would be a cross between a Berliner Weisse and a Witbier, with a hint of salt thrown in.

To me, it’s just delicious. A good Gose is a delicate beer, where the interplay between tartness, salinity, and the malt and spice is all perfectly balanced. It shouldn’t be puckeringly-sour. It shouldn’t really taste salty, but you should be able to detect the slick salinity on the tongue. And the coriander, of course, shouldn’t take center stage lest you mistake it for a Wit. Gose is low in alcohol, generally assumed to come roughly into the 4.5% ABV range.

Given that this is not a popular style, I’m not going to offer the typical BJCP-style tasting notes. Instead, I’d much rather just give broader impressions. Gose is a wide-open playground.

Anderson Valley previously released a Gose that to me did not strike the right balance. They allowed the tartness to dominate, and in such a low-alcohol beer as a Gose, nothing else seemed to come through. It was far more Berliner Weisse than Gose.

Today’s beer is the same Gose, but with some blood orange thrown in for a citrus kick. I still don’t pick up coriander at all, and the hint of salinity that I am detecting is just faint at best, but I think the fruit rounds this one out much more nicely.

Whereas the first Anderson Valley Gose was a one-note sour-bomb, this Gose much better fits the mold of a delicate interplay between uncommon combinations of ingredients. This beer has depth. This citrus note of the fruit contributes to the sourness of the beer, but it does so with harmony rather than with volume. This is a beer that I could definitely sit down and spend some time with. On a hot summer day (or a warm SoCal winter day), hanging out in the sun watching the world go by, this is exactly the sort of beer that I’d love to be drinking. And at only 4.2% ABV, this can definitely be a “day drinking” beer.

Is this the best or most representative Gose I’ve had? No, certainly not. For that, try the Ritterguts Gose. But if you just want a delicious beer to while away a few hours in the sun, this just might be what you’re looking for.

First, my apologies for last week. I was on a family vacation, and although I did sneak away to visit Figueroa Mountain’s tasting room in Los Olivos, CA, it turns out that our WiFi was spotty and I was just having too much damn fun to try to fight through that and post the review. I do have pictures and tasting notes, so perhaps I’ll get to that in a future review.

Once I returned home, I unpacked my vacation luggage, packed my work luggage, and was back out the door to the airport in a matter of hours. Many, many more hours later, I arrived in China, and so I plan to make up for last week’s lack of a review by going big. High-quality American-style craft beer in China? I heard about this, but didn’t believe it, and had to check it out. I visited the Boxing Cat Brewery in Shanghai.
You see, China is what we typically refer to as a “beer desert.” Over here, typically you find mass-market lagers, and occasionally traditional German style beers. It can be possible to find other offerings, but quality is typically hit-or-miss as the novelty of craft beer tends to overwhelm quality when you have less-discerning palates of customers unaccustomed to craft beer. So I’ll admit that my hopes were not all that high, despite the glowing reviews I’d read online. I’ve been burned too many times by that. But, nevertheless, I’m here for a weekend without wife or kids, so I might as well give it a shot, right?

Well, as it turns out, I have been VERY pleasantly surprised by the result. Part of this starts with the key personnel and concept. If you want American beer and food, you start with an American brewer and chef. The brewer hails from the Pacific Northwest–certainly no beer desert–and the chef has comprised a menu that by concept spans “the I-10 corridor” bringing in food from the Southeast, New Orleans, Texas, the Southwest and California.

From walking in the door, you can tell that this place is aimed at visitors and expats, as the hosts and wait staff have solid English skills. While I honestly enjoy the challenge of walking into a restaurant over here and trying to communicate well enough to get a beer and a meal–it can be quite entertaining on both sides–it’s a lot more relaxing when I don’t have to do so.

When I arrived they were having a private party on their first and third floors, so sadly I didn’t get an option to see in detail or take any pictures of the bar area. I dined on the second floor, a scene which could have been taken out of any brewpub in America. Exposed brickwork, dark stained wood everywhere, visible “open” designed ceiling with exposed ductwork and beams. The lighting was a bit low, a bit lower than I’m used to in a brewpub, but not completely out of sorts. Some of the nicer brewpubs I’ve been to in the US are a little less well-lit, and this fits about in line with those. I quite honestly could have easily forgotten I was in China. It felt like a slice of home.

I ordered the beer sampler first, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Cuisine-wise, they have a menu that again could have come out of any brew pub in America. I ordered an appetizer of deep-fried mac and cheese balls. They brought me four beautiful golden-brown bread-crumb battered delights, containing gooey cheese and macaroni, served atop a deliciously seasoned ranch sauce with a side of BBQ sauce. Yes, “deep fried mac and cheese” lived up to be exactly as decadent as it sounds! I followed that up with a pulled pork sandwich full of tender well-dressed pork, a nice side salad with bleu cheese, and cole slaw. The cole slaw was a bit light on flavor, lacking either the mayonnaise base or the vinegar hit of traditional slaw styles, but overall the sandwich and salad were spot-on. Again, they don’t just “emulate” American cuisine here–they’re serving real American food.

But hey, that’s just a start. I haven’t even addressed the beer yet!

The Boxing Cat has six beers on tap, mixed between their standbys and seasonal/rotating creations. Shown here, left to right, are:

Right Hook Helles: 4.5%

Contender Extra Pale Ale: 4.9%

Standing 8 Pilsner: 4.9%

Suckerpunch Pale Ale: 5.5%

Rye IPA: 6.1%

Winterweight Stout: 6.5%

While this seems like a bit of a lighter menu, their “next up” on the board were two very strong DIPAs coming in at about 9% and 10%, respectively, so the moderate ABV choices in front of me were merely an accident of the calendar.

In general, my analysis is that the beers on this list all tasted basically exactly how they were supposed to. Again, that’s what you’d expect, right? Well, I’ve found that brewpub quality is all over the map, and many local brewpubs in “beer desert” towns in the US don’t have the attention to detail and quality control that the market enforces in highly discerning locales. I was very pleased to find that these beers were all of excellent quality. From a technical level, I found no glaring flaws or off flavors. The beers not only were fine exemplars of their style, but they were delicious.

Two of the six, however, were very unique.

First was the Rye IPA. Now, I love rye. I’ve homebrewed Rye IPA, Rye Pale Ale, Rye Blonde Ale, even Roggenbier. This beer had a much more aggressive rye note than I’m used to in the Rye IPA/Pale Ale genre in the US. Upon asking the waiter (and having the host text the head brewer), I found that the grist for this beer is 30% Rye. That certainly explained it! Now, this is not a criticism of the beer. After all, when I finished my sampler, I followed it up with a pint of the Rye IPA. But it was certainly unexpected.

Even more unexpected was the Winterweight Stout. One whiff of it, followed up with a taste to confirm, resulted in a bit of internal dialog. “Mint? Mint?! Really? Is that f*****g mint?” Now, my incredulity was a bit over the top, as it was *obviously* mint. That’s right, this is a mint chocolate stout. I’ve heard of such things from a few forward-thinking American craft breweries, but I’d never encountered one of these in the wild. It’s surprising, then, that I have to fly to China for my first mint stout. How did it taste? Absolutely freaking delicious. One of my fond memories as a child was eating Andes after-dinner mints, and this was the 6.5% ABV stout version of that. I liked it so much that I might adapt this recipe with my milk stout recipe and brew a mint chocolate milk stout when I get back home!

If I had to make one critique of the Boxing Cat, it’s that the service was not quite as attentive as I’m used to. While I highly appreciated the host going the extra mile to text the head brewer and ask the question about the Rye IPA, I will say that the wait staff was not very proactive about noticing an empty plate and sampler tray sitting in front of me. I had to flag them down to order the sandwich and another beer. However, it was a very busy Friday night, so I’ll happily let that one slide.

All in all, I was absolutely impressed by the Boxing Cat Brewery. This was a meal and a group of beers that would be home in any city in America. They even push the envelope on their beer with the heavy hand of Rye and the mint chocolate stout, and managed to hit a high level of execution on both. I’ll head out today to go try my hand again at fighting through the language barrier to find some authentic local cuisine, but I have to thank Boxing Cat for giving me a slice of America while here on the road, and for providing the local residents an accurate example of American brewpub flavor, rather than the mere inauthentic approximation I expected.

Highly recommended. In the “beer desert” that is China, this place is a positive oasis.